


I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

by Ellebeth



Category: Cars (Pixar Movies), Coco (2017), The Great Mouse Detective (1986)
Genre: Gen, Kid Fic, Newspapers, Spoilers, Why Did I Write This?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:47:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29615199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellebeth/pseuds/Ellebeth
Summary: In which a former journalist processes some of her child's favorite movies accordingly.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	1. The Great Mouse Detective: Queen Honours Detective

**Author's Note:**

> I swear I've watched these movies 8,000 times since March 2020. The news clips visible in The Great Mouse Detective inspired me to run with the tales and scratch my news itch. I know. It's weird. Just go with it.

**Queen honours detective; more details revealed in plot on palace**

_ First published June 21, 1897 _

BUCKINGHAM PALACE -- Renowned private detective Basil of Baker Street received the Royal Victorian Medal today at a ceremony to thank him for foiling an assassination attempt on Queen Mousetoria, as Mouseland Yard revealed more details about the attack during Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee.

In her remarks before conferring the medal on Basil and his colleague Maj David Q. Dawson, the queen called the mice “a credit to mousedom” and praised them for “saving our empire from the brink of disaster.”

According to authorities as well as eyewitness reports, crime kingpin Professor Padraic Ratigan attempted to instigate a coup during the queen’s Diamond Jubilee address at Lower Buckingham Palace on June 15. 

Ratigan is presumed dead after an accident while fleeing the scene, Mousetropolitan Police officials said during a news conference immediately after the Royal Victorian Medal ceremony.

Police said Ratigan commissioned a robotic decoy of the queen and arranged for Her Majesty’s kidnapping by several of his associates posing as palace guards. Ratigan appeared alongside the decoy at the address, claiming to be Mousetoria’s new royal consort and using the title as a pretext to seize power.

Assistant Commissioner Bart Rigby, lead investigator on the case, said Basil and Dawson’s timely arrival at the event “prevented absolute catastrophe.” The duo is credited with freeing the queen, who was being held captive but unharmed elsewhere on palace grounds, and pursuing Ratigan from the scene.

Ratigan and his second-in-command, the bat Fidget, have been missing since reportedly crashing their getaway aircraft into Big Ben shortly after fleeing the palace. Authorities believe the pair to be dead and have called off the search for them, Rigby told reporters.

“We feel we can confidently say at this point that Professor Ratigan’s threat to mousedom and decency is neutralized,” Rigby said.

At least a dozen members of Ratigan’s loosely organized crime syndicate are believed to have assisted with the plot, which now appears to be connected to the June 14 burglary of a human toy store in Paddington, according to Mouseland Yard’s Human Crimes Liaison. Rigby said authorities are still working to apprehend all of Ratigan’s accomplices, but predicted the group will be “somewhat rudderless” without their leader.

Rigby said Ratigan also abducted Hiram Flaversham, proprietor of the popular Flaversham’s Toys in Mayfair, and forced him to work on the decoy queen. He said Flaversham is cooperating with authorities and will not be charged.

Maj Dawson, acting as a spokesman for the famously press-shy Basil during the news conference, said it was Flaversham’s daughter Olivia, aged 8, who indirectly brought the plot against the Crown to the two detectives’ attention when she sought out Basil to solve her father’s kidnapping. Both Flavershams were found safe with Basil and Dawson after the pursuit.

“She’s quite a brave little girl, and I suspect she, like me, had no idea what any of us were getting into,” Dawson, a surgeon by profession who weeks ago retired from Her Majesty’s 66th Regiment, said of Olivia. “We’re as pleased to have reunited her with her father as we are to have aided Her Majesty.”

Flaversham, in attendance at the day’s events along with his daughter, told reporters the pair expect to relocate to his hometown in the west of Scotland in the near future. His shop was badly damaged in the course of his abduction and has been closed since, and he said he has no plans to reopen locally.

“It’s time for us to find some peace and get back on our feet,” Flaversham said.

The Royal Victorian Medal, first instituted last year by Mousetoria’s human counterpart Queen Victoria and adopted in mousedom to coincide with Mousetoria’s Diamond Jubilee, is awarded at the queen’s own discretion for personal services to the Crown.

“There can be no greater personal service than risking one’s life to save another’s,” the queen said at today’s ceremony.

Dawson said he and Basil are now weighing an offer from Mouseland Yard to consult regularly on major cases.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tried to write this a little bit like a British newspaper.


	2. Coco: Santa Cecilia Shocker

**Santa Cecilia Shocker: de la Cruz Disputed as Author of ‘Remember Me,’ Other Classics**

_ First published June 19, 2018 _

SANTA CECILIA, Mexico — In the 76 years since Ernesto de la Cruz’s death, the iconic singer who hailed from this small Michoacán town has only grown in renown and notoriety. 

But the newly discovered personal letters of de la Cruz’s musical partner, fellow Santa Cecilia product Hector Rivera, paint a picture that may knock de la Cruz off his pedestal.

Rivera’s letters home to his wife and young daughter between 1917 and 1921 -- the years he toured with de la Cruz, a childhood friend, before suddenly disappearing from the public eye and his family’s lives -- reveal that he penned most of the hits for which de la Cruz is credited, including the mariachi star’s signature ballad “Remember Me.”

“This is an earth-shattering discovery for Mexican music and culture,” said Jaime Gonzalez, tenured professor of musicology at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico. “In American terms, imagine finding out that Elvis’ voice had been dubbed in all of his songs or Bob Dylan didn’t actually write his songs.”

It is a startling revelation even in American music. “Remember Me” was a minor hit for Sammy Davis Jr. in the 1950s and was featured in two Rat Pack films. Selena, the late Tejano singing sensation, often performed from de la Cruz’s catalog in her early touring career, and his music remains popular in Tejano circles.

If de la Cruz is remembered fondly north of the border, he is revered almost as a god south of the border. Like Elvis Presley in the 1950s, the dashing de la Cruz starred -- and sang -- in many Mexican films of the 1930s, in addition to racking up countless hits that remain standards of the mariachi genre. His songwriting prowess was as respected as his charismatic stage presence. His grisly accidental death during a 1942 concert — when a massive prop bell broke from its rigging and crushed de la Cruz mid-song — only heightened his legacy to the level of legend.

But the allegations Rivera’s letters suggest have led Mexican music fans to a reckoning with that legacy.

“I mean, if Ernesto de la Cruz isn’t the artist we thought he was, it almost calls into question what we think artistry is,” said Marisol “El Bombon” Vargas, a host on Sirius XM’s popular Latin music channel Caliente. “This guy has been part of Mexico’s soundtrack for 80 years.” 

“You feel bad for Hector Rivera that his work’s not been recognized, and certainly he was a gifted musician, but it’s hard for a lot of Mexicans to see Ernesto discredited,” said Victor Mariles, longtime music director at XEB-AM and the dean of Mexico City radio.

Rivera’s daughter, Consuela “Coco” Rivera, shared his collected letters home with her family shortly before her death in December at age 101. They include lyrics, in various stages of completion, to many de la Cruz hits — suggesting that, while de la Cruz is credited as sole writer on most of those hits, Rivera was the songwriter of the pair.

The letters gained an unlikely champion in Coco’s 12-year-old great-grandson, Miguel Rivera, who spurred his family to search for his great-great-grandfather’s death certificate and share the letters with music and culture scholars.

“Papa Hector loved Mama Coco and Mama Imelda (Rivera, his wife) so much, and he deserves to have the truth told about him,” said Miguel, who called Coco his best friend. “Everyone should know what he really means to music and to Santa Cecilia.”

In this small town about 350 kilometers west of Mexico City, the Rivera name is synonymous not with songs, but with shoes. Imelda Rivera taught herself the shoemaking trade after her musician husband abruptly stopped writing home in 1921 and was presumed to have abandoned the family. 

Still based in the same shop in Santa Cecilia, Rivera Familia de Zapateros is now a fourth-generation family-owned company specializing in bespoke men’s dress shoes. The label counts telenovela star Alfonso Herrera and ex-President Felipe Calderon among its high-profile fans.

“My abuelita threw herself into shoes with all her heart,” said Elena Rivera, Coco’s daughter and the family business’ president emerita. “It was her way of healing her broken heart after Hector left her.”

In reality, as the family discovered through a private investigator, Hector Rivera died near Santiago de Queretaro in May 1921, the day after his most recent letter home. The locally issued death certificate listed asphyxiation as the cause of death, but it noted arsenic toxicity as a secondary factor. Elena and young Miguel suspect foul play, but investigators have no way of reopening the case, and the family doesn’t wish to salt old wounds further by pursuing it.

“Mama died happy knowing that her father’s memory was alive again,” Elena said, “but this has been kind of a grueling process for the rest of us.”

Imelda felt strongly that her wayward husband’s pursuit of music was responsible for her broken heart and family, Elena said, so she banned music from the family’s home and life — a ban that persisted for decades.

Despite his family’s moratorium on music, Miguel was once a devoted de la Cruz fan, even hand-painting an old guitar to resemble the singer’s trademark white guitar with a calaca on the headstock. But after what he and his family describe as a profound spiritual encounter last Dia de Los Muertos, Miguel realized his family’s legacy was tied to Santa Cecilia’s musical heritage not through de la Cruz, but through the forgotten Hector Rivera.

Elena’s youngest son and Miguel’s father, Rivera Familia chief operations officer Enrique Rivera, credits Miguel’s clandestine love of music with shedding light on the family’s -- and Santa Cecilia’s -- long-buried secret.

“We didn’t want him to pursue music because of what it did to Mama Coco’s family, but he pursued it all the way to the truth,” Enrique said.

The family is in the process of converting an unused room in Rivera Familia’s headquarters to a small museum to Hector Rivera’s childhood and letters. Miguel, who lights up with a boy’s ambition when discussing the project, envisions it as a stop on a musical heritage tour of Santa Cecilia -- though he hopes such a tour will downplay de la Cruz’s contributions. 

“Papa Hector was the real star of Santa Cecilia,” Miguel said.

Already, Santa Cecilia residents are turning their backs on de la Cruz. His mausoleum, a key cultural site in the region, was vandalized two weeks ago, with the words “Forget You” painted over its “Remember Me” inscription.

“The backlash in Ernesto’s hometown has been astounding, no question about it,” said Mariles, the Mexico City radio host. “You’d think they’d be the first to come to his defense, him being their favorite son and all. But Rivera Familia is a huge deal in Santa Cecilia in its own right, and folks are really rallying around this notion of the family’s betrayal.”

Still, Gonzalez, the musicology scholar, says it’s hasty to discredit de la Cruz entirely. 

“As a performer, he’s still an icon, and a legacy like that doesn’t go away overnight,” Gonzalez said. “But certainly that legacy has an asterisk now. I look forward to learning more about the life and career of Hector Rivera and what he contributed in his own right.”

Indeed, de la Cruz’s very trademarks may carry asterisks now. 

Family photos show Hector Rivera posing with the calaca-festooned guitar de la Cruz made iconic.

And Rivera’s letters reveal the origins of “Remember Me,” long considered one of mariachi’s -- and Mexico’s -- iconic romantic ballads, as a lullaby for his infant daughter, Coco. ✱

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wrote this kind of like a New York Times story.


	3. Cars: Controversy, Heartache

**Controversy, heartache as Hicks beats out ‘the King’ in Piston Cup decider**

_ Originally published November 30, 2006 _

LOS ANGELES -- NASCAR’s 2006 Piston Cup season came to a dramatic end on Sunday as Chick Hicks scored a controversial championship victory at the City of Angels 200 tiebreaker race.

The race at Los Angeles International Speedway was marred by Strip “The King” Weathers’ gruesome crash in the final lap of his final race before retiring. Many speculated the crash was caused by Hicks, but video replay cleared him of any direct responsibility.

Weathers eventually limped across the finish line with assistance from Montgomery “Lightning” McQueen, who had been poised to take the checkered flag with a nearly five-second lead but, in another stunning twist, turned back from the finish line to assist Weathers.

Sunday’s race was destined from the start to be a memorable close to the racing season -- a first-ever tiebreaker after last weekend’s Southern 400 at the Motor Speedway of the South ended in a three-way tie between Hicks, Weathers and McQueen. 

And the drama came fast and furious: Hicks’ come-from-behind victory after more than a decade of playing second banana to Weathers; Weathers’ final-turn crash after long being favored to cap off his storied career with an eighth Piston Cup; McQueen’s sacrifice of the checkered flag to help Weathers finish his last race; the rookie’s mysterious disappearance in the days before the race; and the surprise return of racing legend the Fabulous Hudson Hornet as McQueen’s crew chief.

But the biggest twist was the controversy surrounding Hicks’ win, which was greeted by shocked silence in the stands, with most fans more focused on the mangled specter of Weathers’ signature Dinoco blue #43 Plymouth Superbird.

Even after Weathers’ stirring finish, the Piston Cup trophy ceremony was noticeably subdued -- though the famously prickly Hicks still greeted the media triumphantly.

“This is the Chick era,” proclaimed the driver of Team HTB’s lime green #86 Shyster Cremlin.

Hicks, in the #3 position going into the final turn of Sunday’s race, came into dangerously close contact with Weathers while passing him, and the King suffered a dangerous rollover into the grassy infield. The move initially appeared to be a PIT maneuver, long banned in racing, and officials reviewed video footage closely before ruling Weathers’ spinout accidental.

“We certainly know how it looks, and we acknowledge there’s a dark cloud over this race, but we simply do not have enough evidence to definitively say this was an illegal or intentional move,” officiating chief Jack McCamry told reporters, adding that the incident “makes a pretty good argument” for more sophisticated video replay.

Weathers who announced in July he would retire at season’s end, was taken to Angeleno Memorial Garage after the race. He is listed in serious but stable condition.

The incident hearkened back to Wally Rustmann’s infamous spinout of Darrell Cartrip to take the final race of the 1989 Piston Cup. The similarity was not lost on Cartrip, now an analyst for NBC Sports who was in the broadcast booth on Sunday.

“That was a dirty move then, and it’s a dirty move now, especially on what ought to be a day of celebration for the King,” Cartrip said on the broadcast. “Hicks may have won, but this one’s going to haunt him.”

The consequences proved swift, in reputation if not in record. 

Dinoco Racing owner George “Tex” Dinoco announced in August he would invite this year’s Piston Cup winner to join his team. But in the wake of Sunday’s championship race, he told reporters he would not extend that invitation to Hicks, who has been dogged for years by accusations of cheating and unsportsmanlike conduct.

“There is no place on our team for dirty racing,” Dinoco said, adding that Weathers has “set the gold standard for racing” since joining the elite team in 1977. “Dinoco drivers compete with dignity, period.”

Hicks, who reportedly had been cozying up to Dinoco Racing leadership in the days before the race, reacted defiantly to the team’s snub: “I think today speaks for itself. I’m clearly doing just fine on Team HTB.”

Team HTB officials were similarly supportive of Hicks, who has driven for the Hostile Takeover Bank-backed racing team since 1994. 

“Chick’s a heck of a competitor,” team owner Oliver “Oily” Shelby told reporters. “And a win’s a win, right?”

Sources said Dinoco planned to invite rookie third-place finisher McQueen to the team, citing his “selfless good sportsmanship” in stopping just short of the finish line, sitting silently while Hicks crossed, then turning back to aid Weathers. 

However, McQueen said his immediate plans are to continue driving the red #95 Corvette for Rust-Eze Racing, out of loyalty to the owners who “gave me my big break.” 

McQueen was the subject of considerable buzz after failing to show up for Wednesday’s scheduled media day in Los Angeles. He was located Friday in tiny Radiator Springs, Arizona.

McQueen told reporters residents of the former Route 66 outpost took him in after he was stranded on nearby Interstate 40 late Monday night. He said the community had “a really surprising level of expertise” about racing, and owners of local tire, fuel and body businesses helped him gear up for City of Angels. Several joined him as crew members Sunday.

To the amazement of longtime racing observers, McQueen’s crew chief was none other than the Fabulous Hudson Hornet. The winner of three consecutive Piston Cups in the 1950s has been absent from the public eye since a catastrophic 1954 crash at Sonoma. Now going by the name Doc Hudson, he declined to speak to the media after the race. 

Crew member Luigi da Fiatta, whose shop Casa Della Tires supplied McQueen’s eye-catching whitewall tires for Sunday, said Hudson has lived incognito in Radiator Springs for decades as its town doctor and magistrate. da Fiatta said the former champion does not discuss his racing career, news of which came as a surprise to townspeople.

“He and Lightning, they are like the Odd Couple, but they help each other,” da Fiatta said of the partnership.

In his first year on the NASCAR circuit, McQueen has earned a reputation as a slick, cocky lone wolf, whose would-be win Sunday -- or last weekend at the South -- would have made him the first-ever rookie to win the Piston Cup. But his team-focused attitude and sacrifice at the finish line revealed surprising humility.

“At the end of the day, it’s just an empty cup,” McQueen told reporters. “The King’s been good to me, and he deserved to finish his last race more than I deserved to win.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not a sportswriter, nor am I a racing expert (just someone who grew up watching NASCAR with her dad), but I did my best.
> 
> ...and yes, the Darrell Cartrip accident is 100% based on a real incident - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_Waltrip#Hendrick_Motorsports_years:_1987%E2%80%931990


End file.
